Four ASEAN Nations Agree to Pilot Multilateral Power
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- ASEAN Centre for Energy and the VTMS countries agreed in December, during an ASEAN Power Grid consultation meeting, to move forward with a multilateral power trading pilot supported by ESCAP and development partners.
- Vietnam, Malaysia, and Singapore signed a Joint Development Agreement to assess a multilateral arrangement that would route power from Vietnam to Peninsula Malaysia via subsea cable, then overland to Singapore using existing grid infrastructure.
- The multilateral routing would require subsea infrastructure only about 40% the length of a direct Vietnam-Singapore connection, significantly reducing capital costs, technical complexity, and supply chain risk.
- Singapore's Energy Market Authority had conditionally approved in October 2023 the import of 1.2 GW of clean electricity from Vietnam via an approximately 1,000 km subsea interconnector — a plan now being superseded by the multilateral route.
- Thailand's inclusion leverages the existing Laos-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore Power Integration Project (LTMS-PIP), launched in 2022, plus planned Thailand-Malaysia interconnection upgrades, and adds a second export market for Vietnamese clean power.
- The pilot launches later this year, beginning with cost-benefit analyses and capacity-building on grid code harmonization, wheeling charges, and subsea infrastructure financing under a potential "project of common interest" modality.
Why it matters: The VTMS pilot is the first concrete, country-level test of multilateral power trade within ASEAN, moving the grid concept from study to implementation. The Malaysia-routing design cuts required subsea cable length to roughly 40% of a direct Vietnam-Singapore link, giving Vietnam a viable export channel for its wind resources while giving Singapore and Malaysia a diversified clean power supply at lower capital cost.
